Praise song

Praise song, one of the most widely used poetic forms in Africa; a series of laudatory epithets applied to gods, men, animals, plants, and towns that capture the essence of the object being praised. Professional bards, who may be both praise singers to a chief and court historians of their tribe, chant praise songs such as these of the great Zulu chieftain Shaka:

He is Shaka the unshakeable,
Thunderer-while-sitting, son of Menzi.
He is the bird that preys on other birds,
The battle-axe that excels over other battle-axes.
He is the long-strided pursuer, son of Ndaba,
Who pursued the sun and the moon.
He is the great hubbub like the rocks of Nkandla
Where elephants take shelter
When the heavens frown…(trans. by Ezekiel Mphahlele)

Although he is expected to know all of the traditional phrases handed down by word of mouth in his tribe, the bard is also free to make additions to existing poems. Thus the praise songs of Shango, the Yoruba god of thunder and lightning, might contain a modern comparison of the god to the power and noise of a railway.

Among some Bantu-speaking peoples, the praise song is an important form of oral literature. The Sotho of Lesotho required all boys undergoing initiation to compose praises for themselves that set forth the ideals of action or manhood. Sotho bards also composed traditional praises of chiefs and warriors, and even a very young man was allowed to create praises of himself if he had performed feats of great courage.

These praise songs were recited as follows: the reciter stood in an open space, visible to all assembled. He then began reciting in a high voice, punctuating his victories in war by stabbing the ground with his spear, until he had set forth not only his lineage and the battles in which he had fought but his entire life history. Sotho praises are telegraphic, leaving much to the listener’s imagination; their language is poetic, and the sequence of events not necessarily logical. Metaphor is a key device for suggesting worth (a reciter might call himself a ferocious animal), and poetic license is granted for coining new words.

To the subjects used by the Sotho, the Tswana of Botswana add women, tribal groups, domestic (especially cattle) and wild animals, trees, crops, various features of the landscape, and divining bones. Their praise songs consist of a succession of loose stanzas with an irregular number of lines and a balanced metrical form. Experiences such as going abroad to work for Europeans have become a subject of recent praise poems, and recitation has been extended from tribal meetings and ritual occasions such as weddings to the beer hall and labour camp.

In western Africa, also, praise songs have been adapted to the times, and a modern praise singer often serves as an entertainer hired to flatter the rich and socially prominent or to act as a master of ceremonies for paramount chiefs at state functions—e.g., among the Hausa and Manding peoples. Thus praise-song poems, though still embodying and preserving a tribe’s history, have also been adapted to an increasingly urbanized and Westernized African society.